Lawyer Asks For Trial Continuance So He Can Attend National Championship Game

Erin Geiger Smith

Dec. 16, 2009, 2:51 PM

Back in the late summer/early fall of 2005, I was in a partner's office in Houston on a conference call with opposing counsel.

We were trying to set a date for an arbitration and the partners on the call all agreed on January 5, 2006.

I kept quiet, until we hung up the phone. And then I pointed out that January 5 would be the night after the University of Texas would play for the national championship at the Rose Bowl, making it perhaps not the best day to begin an arbitration.

Sure, it was early in the season, but that is how confident I was in Vince Young. And I did not want to spend the first Longhorn national championship victory of my lifetime in the last-minute ramp-up mode before the beginning of a week-long arbitration. My partner, a Baylor man, scoffed. And the date remained.

Fast forward approximately four months, and I spent the greatest college football game of all time with one eye on the screen and one eye on the outline for the next morning's opening statment. (For the record: Texas 41, USC 38)

So I would usually be especially sympathetic for the attorneys who filed the Motion to Continue highlighted by Above The Law today. It begins this way:

1. This case was set for trial several months ago before certain monumental events occurred that were beyond the anticipation of the attorneys and the clients.

2. Since the setting of this case, one of the two great college football teams in this State has reached levels on a national scale that have not been enjoyed by any team in this State in 17 years next preceding the date hereof.

Except, of course, the motion ends this way:

ROLL TIDE!!...and may the Longhorns be defeated.

The motion is a valiant effort, drafted by an Alabama attorney (with the support of his clients, I am sure) requesting a trial, scheduled to begin on January 4, be postponed so he (and others) may attend the BCS Championship game between The University of Texas and The University of Alabama.

The game is scheduled for January 7. Good luck to the lawyers of Bains & Terry, who filed the motion. Well, good luck in making it to the game. I hope the outcome of the game brings you no joy at all.